Making the Case for Energy Efficiency in South China
Thursday, November 6th, 2008 by Matthew DeGrootWe’re fond of saying that advocacy is an everyday practice — it’s about being being able to persuade others that one course of action is superior to another. This can include everything from where to go for dinner to how best to address global warming.
In Guandong Province, China, it often means the difference between clean or dirty industrial production. Guangdong, an area about the size of Texas, is home to 100 million people — and more manufacturing jobs than the entire United States. Often called the “Factory to the World,” this province has maintained double digit economic growth for more than a decade. As the Government of China now recognizes, however, this growth has engendered a host of new challenges: skyrocketing energy needs, inefficient production processes, and staggering amounts of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. As a consequence, China has proactively set some of the most ambitious energy efficiency and GHG reduction targets of any country in the world.